Sunday, April 30, 2017

Step aside Edward Gibbon

As I have argued before, all complex systems are multi-causal and yet our thinking inclines deterministically towards mono- or dual causalism. X deterministically causes Y, or at best, X+Y causes Z. The reality is that almost always there are multiple causes with different weightings, interacting with one another in different fashions under different conditions. All are contributive but in often inexplicable or non-transparent ways.

Going to the source, it appears that A. Demandt in Der Fall Roms (1984) compiled a full list of hypotheses as to the root cause of the fall of Rome. He came up with 210 reasons people have proposed caused the fall. While I would not argue that all of these are contributive causes, I would be happy to make the argument that a good number of them are (in different proportions).

With one or two causes, it easy to create a usefully true heuristic: Don't admit barbarians into your borders; Maintain proper respect for religion and tradition; Ensure consent of the governed; Avoid debt, etc. But as soon as you acknowledge that many things had to go wrong in the right proportions, at the right time and in the right sequence, the ability to extract useful heuristics declines. Complexity challenges us. Life is a lot simpler when you only have to do one thing right, much more of a burden when you have to do many things right.

Here are the 210 proposed possible causes of the fall of Rome as reported by Demandt: